Week 10 Assignment 3 Development Progress
Over the past few days, our team discussed how to shape the moment-to-moment gameplay of Storm The Core. We agreed early on that the game needed to feel responsive and satisfying in both movement and combat, while still being readable and not visually overwhelming. I focused on a few key systems to keep interactions fun but not too complicated for the player:
Simple UI, Clear Feedback
One of my biggest goals was building a clean interface that shows health, XP, energy, and ability status without cluttering the screen. I implemented a pause menu that uses a layered overlay and variable tracking to animate the UI elements. Players can use arrows to navigate and Return to select, and I made sure it feels snappy to match the game’s fast pacing.
Modular Player/Enemy Logic
To make our game systems more manageable, I separated out all player and enemy logic into different event sheets using GDevelop’s event linking. This lets us keep things readable while still giving flexibility to update combat, movement, and AI wave spawning. We want each wave to feel distinct, and the later waves will ramp up with stronger or faster enemy types.
Player Movement & Combat Core
The movement is drift-based, with friction so the player can still stop and control easily. Shooting is done via mouse aim, and we’ve designed the controls so players can boost, aim, and fire at the same time without awkward key binds. We’re aiming for a combat system that rewards mobility and smart positioning instead of just spamming fire.
So far, I’ve completed the pause menu system and UI logic. This includes the overlay visuals, input handling, animation switching, and variable-based state control. It took some iteration to get the menu navigation working smoothly, especially the part where pressing escape pauses the game and brings up a clean UI that can be interacted with.
Although I haven’t built the combat or wave mechanics myself, I contributed by helping set up the structure for both the player and enemy systems alongside my team. We’ve laid the foundation so the next steps like wave escalation, ability upgrades, or enemy pathing can be built without cluttering the core logic.
Next, I’ll focus on linking more UI feedback to in-game variables, like displaying health, XP, and energy. I’ll also start preparing for how the shop menu might work during checkpoint sectors.
Right now, we’re on track with our planned features. The game loop is shaping up, and the structure we’ve built so far is solid for layering more complexity over time.
